Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Protagoras', 'Parerga and Paralipomena' and 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

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3 ideas

29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 1. Religious Commitment / a. Religious Belief
The truly great haters in world history have always been priests [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The truly great haters in world history have always been priests.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§07)
     A reaction: Wicked, but it has a lot of truth. Priests have a lot to defend, and a lot of reasons for feeling threatened.
Only religion introduces serious issues to uneducated people [Schopenhauer]
     Full Idea: Religion is the only means of introducing some notion of the high significance of life into the uncultivated heads of the masses.
     From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], XV:174)
     A reaction: Cf Philip Larkin's poem 'Church Going'. On the whole Schopenhauer didn't actually believe that our lives had any 'high significance'.
29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 3. Problem of Evil / a. Problem of Evil
The Creator created the possibilities for worlds, so should have made a better one than this possible [Schopenhauer]
     Full Idea: The Creator created not only the world, but also created possibility itself; therefore he should have created the possibility of a better world than this one.
     From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], XII:156)
     A reaction: This is explicitly a response to Leibniz's claim that the Creator selected the best of all possible worlds from the available options. The Euthyphro Question hovers here: must the Creator accept what is possible (the platonic view), or create possibility?